Zoho has launched Zia Chat, an AI interface that lets users find information, understand context and take action across the applications they use at work. Alongside the launch, the company has announced its entry into vertical SaaS with seven industry-specific applications covering retail, automotive, BFSI, healthcare, education, real estate and restaurants.
Zoho reports 47% revenue growth in India
Zoho, headquartered in Chennai, said its revenue in India increased 47% year-over-year in 2025. The company attributed the growth to several applications and industry sectors, while automotive also saw increasing customer traction.
- Applications: Zoho Workplace, Zoho One, Zoho CRM, Zoho Books and Zoho People
- Industry sectors: ITeS, manufacturing, BFSI, professional services and retail
- Automotive: Increasing customer traction
Zia Chat combines business information and actions
Zia Chat is built into Zoho’s business application ecosystem and provides a conversational interface for finding information, understanding business context and taking action. It works across applications, modules, fields and records that users are authorised to access, bringing information and workflows together without separate integrations between individual Zoho applications.
Across sales, marketing, support, HR and finance, Zia Chat can:
- Find prospects, customers and other business information
- Generate and qualify leads
- Resolve support issues and manage invoices and finances
- Retrieve and summarise records
- Analyse business data
- Create reports, charts, spreadsheets, presentations, proposals and follow-up emails
Zia Chat can also perform actions within the same conversation, such as creating or assigning tasks, sharing recurring support issues with management, sending low-stock alerts to inventory teams and scheduling recurring reports. For example, a salesperson can ask Zia Chat to review account interactions, summarise support issues and payment history, identify risks and prepare a presentation before drafting a follow-up email and creating tasks.
Zia Chat uses semantic search, resolvers, work graph and proximity signals to identify relevant business entities and relationships. It can also connect external applications and systems through MCP integrations, bringing their information and capabilities into the same conversational interface.
The interface includes Skills for specialised tasks, Profiles for role-specific workflows and Zia Agents for multi-step work. Zoho is also taking a model-agnostic approach, allowing organisations to choose AI large language models as capabilities, costs and performance change.
Permissions remain tied to existing controls
Zia Chat follows application permissions and authorisation boundaries. If a user can view but not edit information, Zia Chat cannot edit it, while actions requiring approval remain subject to the organisation’s approval process. External system access is similarly governed by the permissions provided through integrations.
Users can review and confirm actions before information is created, changed or sent. Responses can also link to the underlying records used to generate them. Zoho said data accessed by Zia Chat is not used to train its AI models.
Vertical SaaS portfolio expands across seven industries
Zoho has spent more than two decades building an integrated business application suite. Its vertical SaaS expansion extends that platform to industries with specialised workflows, business rules, regulatory requirements and operating processes.
The initial portfolio covers:
- Retail
- Automotive
- BFSI
- Healthcare
- Education
- Real estate
- Restaurants
Zoho said combining these industry-specific applications with its broader suite gives AI additional context about industry entities, relationships, rules and workflows.
Retail and Automotive solutions
Zoho for Retail combines point-of-sale, ERP, payments, commerce, sales, marketing and inventory capabilities. Zoho RetailIQ, its CRM for physical retail, brings customer and transaction information into a retail-specific workflow, supporting customer segmentation and engagement across WhatsApp, SMS and RCS.
It can also connect supported retail billing systems with Zoho POS, Zoho ERP and Zoho Desk. Meanwhile, Zoho for Automotive connects customer, dealer, vehicle and operational information across sales, service, spares, warranty and dealer operations, with support for OEM, ERP and legacy system integrations.
The automotive portfolio includes Zoho AutoDMS, an industry-focused dealer management solution.
BFSI and Healthcare applications
Zoho for BFSI covers banks, NBFCs, insurers and other financial institutions with CRM, loan origination, business rules and decisioning capabilities. Zoho LOS covers lending from application and verification through decisioning and disbursement, bringing together borrower information, workflows, approvals and downstream processes.
The BFSI portfolio also includes AI-powered document intelligence, agentic workflows, MCP integrations and agent-building capabilities. For healthcare, Zoho provides solutions covering patient records, appointments, billing and patient engagement, while integrating with existing EHR, EMR and HIMS systems.
MedScribe is an AI-native, ABDM-compliant clinical documentation solution that turns conversations into structured records. It supports contextual patient queries, specialty templates, voice-to-text and multilingual clinical workflows.
Education and Real Estate solutions
Zoho for Education combines education-specific solutions with Zoho Classes, Zoho Mail, WorkDrive and Creator. Zoho Campus, initially launching in India, covers institutional workflows including admissions, fee collection, attendance, timetables, assignments and staff records, with a unified dashboard and SSO.
Zoho for Real Estate provides industry-specific workflows, business logic, security and data architecture for brokers and builders. It covers lead capture and assignment, follow-ups, property matching, site visits, deal closure and workflow automation.
Zoho POS for Restaurants
Zoho POS for Restaurants is a cloud POS covering omnichannel orders, dine-in and table service, menu and kitchen operations, inventory and recipe management, self-service ordering, and catering and event management.
Zoho said the vertical applications can connect with its broader business suite and other systems where required. The company also plans to expand its vertical SaaS portfolio to additional industries.
Pricing and availability
Businesses with annual billing of up to Rs. 12 lakh can use Zoho POS for Restaurants for free. Zoho Campus is initially available in India, with the company planning to expand its vertical SaaS portfolio to additional industries.
Speaking on the launch, Sridhar Vembu, Chief Scientist and Co-founder, Zoho, said:
Every day, employees waste their time navigating menus, hunting for dropdowns and fighting with fragmented software interfaces. There is an interface crisis, and people spend too much time searching for the right context and data. We strip away the UIs of different applications and give employees a single, unified AI interface across the business.
Behind the interface problem is a deeper issue, fragmented business context. When information and workflows are spread across multiple applications, AI has only a partial view of the business. Zia Chat brings that information and context together, so users can find information, understand context and take action across applications through one conversational experience. Business context is also shaped by the workflows, rules and regulatory requirements of each industry. Our expansion into vertical SaaS brings that industry-specific context onto the same platform.